Freak
by TolkienGirl
Summary: A series of one-shots or chapters chronicling the many times Sherlock's been called a freak and one time that he wasn't. Chapter 3 now up! Rated for mild language and drug use. (*All rights to their respective owners*)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is the first in a series of one-shots/chapters, going from Sherlock's childhood to adulthood. Per my usual style, it is a bit angsty, but the final chapter will have some redemption and POSSIBLY something of a Sherlollyish nature ;). It always struck me how people like Donovan just throw the word freak around, either unaware of its effect or intentionally trying to hurt. Sherlock may act like he doesn't care, but the fact that he always responds antagonistically shows that it does hurt him on some level. This is me dabbling in explaining that. Enjoy! And Review please! :)**

**Oh, and bonus Blind Banker reference about watch time and date. See if you catch it! **

Sherlock was seven years old when he was called a freak for the first time.

It was May, and he remembered this long afterwards, because he had been counting down the days until his father's visit. Father and Mummy had separated when he was five, and Father's visits straggled fewer and fewer across the months.

Mycroft—seven years Sherlock's senior, and with no love lost for their paternal progenitor—had not regretted Alistair Holmes's increased absence. But Sherlock could not help admiring the tall, broad-shouldered figure of a man with the deep booming voice and a pair of steely blue eyes not unlike his own. Mummy was undeniably sweet and lovable, but she was small and slight and unintimidating; hardly an impressive persona. On the other hand, Father…

Sherlock, with a peculiar preference for respect over affection, even at the age of seven, was eager for his father's arrival. He practiced his new violin studiously, recognizing the importance of musical accomplishment in his father's (a gifted amateur composer) eyes. He read avidly about current events, that their conversation might be diverse, never bored by the complex details that would have confused a normal lad of seven. Then again, Sherlock was already showing signs that he was far from normal.

He didn't know it then, yet. Blissfully unaware, he sat on the broad stones steps of his mother's manor—she had been the one with the "old" money—and wrapped thin arms around thin knees as he stared out at the long graveled drive ahead. A breeze tousled his wavy dark hair, and he squinted in the late spring sunlight.

At long last—but waiting is always forever to a child—the sound of tire treads crunched in the distance and a gleaming automobile pulled towards him. Sherlock surveyed the vehicle and decided that Father had been doing well for himself.

_New car…new job? Or perhaps new commission for his old job? Perhaps the car is part of a promotion package, or is a compensation for something difficult he has to do._

His "gift," as Mummy called it, had never seemed particularly unusual or significant to him. From the earliest days of his childhood, seeing meant more for him than it did for others. He did not merely glance over things in a distracted, ineffective way; he looked, really _looked._ From what he observed he deduced the possible explanations, then he eliminated the least likely and so decided upon a conclusion. It was simple, really, and it was (in his mind) the only rational course of action.

The car ground to a halt and Sherlock hopped off the steps, running forward to meet the man he'd been waiting for. He was pulled into a tight, rather smothering hug—he disliked too much physical contact in general, but would make an exception for this—and was released a moment later to stare up and mirror his own gaze in the blue-gray depths of his father's.

"You've grown, Sherlock! Two inches since I last saw you!" He smiled approvingly. "Now, hop in—we'll go for a jaunt around the countryside. This weather's too nice to be wasted."

"But what about Mycroft?" Sherlock asked. He wanted to add _and Mummy_, but he had learned to know better than that. His father's string of girlfriends upset him, but he wanted to be on good terms with him so he pretended that it did not.

A little crease appeared between his father's brows. "I'll…catch up with your brother later," he explained quickly, and then turned the subject by telling Sherlock all about the car.

_Something's happened that Mycroft won't like_, Sherlock realized. _Maybe it has to do with the new job development._

He didn't comment on it yet, though, because he had not gathered enough evidence to draw a satisfactory conclusion. For the moment, he put it aside and reveled in the plush seats of the fine auto, and the privilege of being allowed to ride in the front.

They sped along some country roads, as promised, but though Sherlock enjoyed the verdant scenery he was much more interested in observing his father and finagling tidbits of interest.

His father seemed a bit awkward; more than usual. He was obviously trying hard to be jovial and paternal. "Well, my boy, what have you been at lately? Doing well in school, I hope?"

"Yes, sir," Sherlock assented absently. The last piece of the puzzle slid into place and he turned to his father abruptly, eager to impress. "And what about you? Congratulations on the promotion, even though your new girlfriend doesn't like that it means more trips abroad. She may have been mad at breakfast this morning, but maybe she'll come around."

His father, who was not easily surprised, looked astounded. Sherlock had never really believed that people's jaws dropped when they were astonished, but apparently they did.

"How…the _hell_ did you know that? I'm sorry, excuse my language, son. But—I haven't told anyone…"

Sherlock was bouncing up and down in his seat a bit. "Oh, I'll tell you! It's not too hard, really." He ticked off his fingers so he wouldn't miss anything. "New car, which means that you've gotten a bump up in the world although your business cards are the same so it's within the same company. You've just gotten back from an international flight—because not only are there multilingual ticket stubs sticking out of your pocket but you've also forgotten to change the date back on your watch. You went to breakfast this morning with your girlfriend, and you walked together—there's a tiny touch of lipstick on your right cheek and some white hairs from a woman's fur wrap on your right sleeve, meaning that you took her arm. That means that you two were on friendly terms this morning, but then you told her about the upgrade and the increased trips (you've got a thick itinerary tucked next to your seat—and she was mad. She went outside and you went after her, in the rain, because your coat collar is damp. This shows that you were both agitated because although you had an umbrella with you didn't open it because you weren't thinking about it.—also, you left separately since there's no more lipstick or fur. And finally, it's a new girlfriend because you're wearing a different cologne even though you've liked the same one forever. That means that someone, who spends time near you and whose aesthetic approval you desire prefers a different scent and you are accommodating them because the relationship is new and you want it to work."

He finished his narrative—which had been delivered at a rapid-fire pace (he'd been practicing)—and stopped, very short of breath. He was giddy with excitement—he'd gone to great lengths to use all the big words that he'd been studying in Mummy's Oxford dictionary, and he thought that he had sounded very much like a grownup.

He knotted his slim fingers together as he waited, watching his father's face carefully.

The look of blank shock there changed rapidly to something different—something almost…disgusted. Suddenly, Sherlock felt as though a chilly April wind, sneaking into May's territory, had breathed against his neck. He opened his mouth to say something, but no words would come.

His father spoke first. "What are you, some kind of freak?" There was something cold and frightened and ugly in his eyes. "My own son is a freak."

_Freak._ Sherlock knew that word; he had just read it a couple of weeks ago, when he was trying to find _frigate_ in the dictionary. _Noun: a person or animal who is an example of a strange deviation from nature; a monster._

It stung more than if he had been slapped. Sherlock remembered, two days ago, when one of the strings on his violin had snapped. In a second, the strong, taut, purposeful strand of metal had recoiled, curling back in a painful frazzle of curled wire and sharp ends.

That was how he felt now. Broken. Strange. An aberration.

"Father, I…"

"Son, let me tell you something," his father interjected. His voice wasn't hard, but his eyes had not lost that wary, contemptuous look. "You can't go around doing that to people. It's bloody unsettling, alright? It's not normal. What has your mother been teaching you?"

He lapsed into silence, and Sherlock did not speak again.

His soul was raw, and for once his mind could not provide the answers.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: still in childhood years…I hope you guys like this one too! I've heard theories of Sherlock being autistic, and while I find that interesting I define him more loosely. As far as I'm concerned, his hyper-observancy and hyper-sensitivity are all tied up with his obsessive, brilliant personality. I find him very fascinating to write about…I think it's interesting to speculate about his growing up years. **

**This shot includes appearances from Mycroft and "Mummy," whose presence in Sherlock's life I have always considered to be important…though elusive.**

Chapter Two

When Sherlock was eleven, Mummy took him and Mycroft to the circus. In the beginning, he was bored. He tried to listen to other people's conversations for a little while, but nobody was speaking about anything interesting.

It was hot under the tent. The crowd was growing, pushing and shoving up against each other.

He could smell spilled beer, sticky on the trampled green—the unpleasant scent of a unwashed public, and the thick stifling smell of musty hay, from the performing animal's quarters.

He could hear the loud, raucous voices of the audience—mangling English with a variety of accents and slang-variants. Shouting, swearing, chatting—all a friendly, brutal tussle of cacophonic interaction.

He could see the whole assortment of people before him—women, men, children—and the flamboyantly dressed ringleader, who was gesticulating in an overdramatic fashion. The weary performing animals pawed impatiently in their cages.

His chest felt tight, and his lungs felt pushed in, getting smaller and smaller so that he couldn't breathe. Mummy and Mycroft were watching the bloviating ringmaster with far more attention and interest than he deserved. They weren't looking at Sherlock. He wrapped his fingers around Mummy's in supplication, finding himself unable to speak. She gave his hand an absent squeeze.

Dots swam before his eyes. There were too many noises, too many smells, too many sights. His hyper-observant mind—which noticed everything in painful detail—overflowed so much that he felt as though he were drowning in a sea of sensory information.

_Close your eyes…shut it out…_ He couldn't . Even if he stopped seeing there was still too much. He couldn't organize it all, sort through it all.

Panic was rising in him, swift and surely. He tugged at Mummy's arm desperately. "Mummy—" the word came out in a strangled way, but at least it was audible.

She looked down at him. "Sherlock—" a concerned expression flashed through her soft brown eyes. "Oh my God. Come on, let's get you out of here." She pulled at Mycroft's sleeve and he followed them unwillingly.

Ten minutes later, they were sitting on the grassy hillside above the circus tent. Sherlock let his head hanging between his knees, feeling the pounding and chaos finally recede. He took a deep, shaky breath.

"Are you better, Darling?" Mummy asked. Her gentle fingers worked their way through his tangled hair.

He nodded, unable to speak.

She chewed her lip. "It was foolish of me to bring you. I should have known that it would be too much for you. What happened?"

He stared at the grass blades beneath his feat. Within three square inches there were four-hundred-and-thirty-nine blades of grass.

_No, stop,_ he told himself. He had to answer Mummy's question. "There was too much," he said simply. "Too much of everything."

"Oh, Sherlock." She traced her fingers over his arm, softly, so that it didn't make him want to push her away. His aversion to physical contact had only increased over the years, but he never minded Mummy's touch.

He sat for a minute, closing his eyes and trying to rid himself of that buzzing, stinging sensation that plagued his brain.

He heard his brother give a derisive snort. "Stop babying him, Mother."

"He can't help getting overwhelmed, he's very sensitive," their mother countered.

"Sensitive?" Mycroft scoffed, letting his eighteen-year-old ire boil over. "We can barely take him out into public, before he has a meltdown like this. Sensitive isn't the word for it. He's a freak."

Sherlock's eyes snapped open. The world stopped being shaky and became crystal clear—sharp and defined, with every sight a knifeblade. He could hear his father's voice again: _"My own son, a freak."_

First father, now brother.

He staggered to his feet, opened his mouth to scream, "I'm _not_!" but the words wouldn't come at all.

"Mycroft!" his mother flashed. "How could you? He's only a child—you are eighteen! Don't say that."

Mycroft seemed to know that he'd gone too far, but he was too proud to admit it. He shrugged his already-plump shoulders carelessly. "He'd figure it out sometime. Everyone else has."

Then he stalked down the hill.

Sherlock watched him go. He could feel his lips trembling, but he knew it was unmanly to cry. With a great effort, he pushed the tears back and set his jaw, hard.

He shrugged away from his mother's hand. "He's right," he said stonily. "Father thinks so too."

She sighed deeply and then tugged at his shoulder, turning him towards her. She was a tall woman, but she leaned down a bit to meet his eyes. "Sherlock, you're not a freak. You have a gift."

"I don't want it," he muttered bitterly. "Everyone will hate me."

He thought he could see tears in her eyes. "I will always love you."

_Remember that. Delete the rest_. He tried to force himself to discard the memory of his father, the fresh recollection of Mycroft's words.

He had deleted things in the past, when he had the time to mull over the contents of his mind in the quiet of his room. He could sort it out, choose what was useful, throw out the rest.

But try as he might, he could never forget the burning brand of his brother's words.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Sorry that I've been late with this! This is a very angsty fic, I realize, and here is another sad chapter…hope that you can appreciate it any way! In a lot of ways this fic is broadening its scope and examining Sherlock's development…how he became who is. That's a journey I enjoy, and I hope you do too! Please Read and Review!**

**Note: I used the British "whinging" for "whining"—I think that's correct. If not, please let me know!**

_348._

It was the morning of the last day of Eighth Year, and Sherlock was counting the minutes. Literally.

In the back of his mind, he could hear Mummy's voice speaking gently but firmly to him, telling him to stop focusing on the time left and instead, try to do something more productive with the hours remaining. _"I never worry about you being lazy, Sherlock. But your mind—if you let your mind run wild, because you're bored, you may hurt yourself. I don't want that, Darling."_

He shrugged her voice away, sinking down against an old oak tree in the school yard.

_347_.

It had rained all morning, but he had been walking the grounds of the school anyway. There weren't any classes on the last day—just packing up one's things, straightening one's dormitory room, and waiting for one's parents.

Well, not everyone's parents.

Mummy was at an art showing in Glasgow, driving home today, but not in time to pick him up.

That task would fall to Mycroft.

Sherlock sighed, coupling a thirteen-year-old's petulance with something more subtly poignant. Most of the time, he liked to pretend that his ever-increasing distaste for Mycroft was based upon some rational, sensible reason—but the nagging recollection plagued him of the real, underlying cause…Mycroft's indifference, condescension, and even contempt.

It had hurt him.

_Emotions. So weak._ He raked his fingers through his dark, tangled hair and scowled blackly up at the sluggish grey clouds. For years now, he'd been focusing on diverting every one of his emotions to a more practical end. Anger became intensity; fear became curiosity; excitement became motivation. The problem was, he hadn't figured out what to do with _hurt_ yet.

_346._

As he mused about it now, he searched his mind for some clue…slipping in and out of thoughts. He liked to think of his intellect being divided into a series of storerooms, where information was neatly organized by category; easily accessible but not a distraction the rest of the time. It was the only way by which he could find some semblance of rest—to file away some of the omnipresent data that entered his mind every which way at all times. An eidetic memory combined with a hyper-observant nature had long been the cause of agony to him, as he had learned at that fateful day at the circus. After that, Mummy had taught him to think of his mind like a palace—a place with enormous space for him to put away the facts that pounded at the doors so loudly and constantly, to control them, to even forget about them until they were needed.

Now, with nothing to do but wait for a brother he didn't want to see, he turned his cerebral drive to seek for some means by which to transform the shameful, childish sensation of _hurt_ into a colder, harder, more useful end.

_345._

He couldn't find anything. None of the many chambers of the mind palace revealed a comforting solution. He tapped his thin fingers against his knees with a quick, strident beat—his stress level rising.

_No place for it. No way to change it. No way to hide it._

If that was indeed the case, there was only one thing to do with this despicable sensitivity of his.

_344._

_Delete it._

His tumultuous reverie was interrupted by the sound of voices around him, and he looked up to find himself in the sights of Bill Reilly, a boy who had set about making Sherlock's life as miserable as possible since the beginning of term.

Bill was a pimple-faced urchin who (to Sherlock's eyes) had the left sleeve of a serial test cheater, the fingernails of a nervous liar, and the nose of a bully. The two or three other boys with him were similarly easy to deduce, but at the moment he didn't bother. There was no use cluttering the rooms of the Mind Palace with such cloying information.

"Hullo, git," said Bill, with what Sherlock considered to be a porcine grin.

"Sell all your stolen chem tests?" returned Sherlock. That was so easy it didn't even have to be deduced. He'd simply watched Bill "covertly" exchange half-a-dozen easily identifiable packets for pound notes in the hall the day before exams.

Bill, however, had not supposed his dealings to be less than clandestine. He grabbed Sherlock by the collar and jerked him to his feet. "How the bloody hell—"

Sherlock permitted himself an icy half-smile, fixing his steely eyes on Bill's weak blue ones. "Language, language." He glanced at Bill's lumpy trouser pocket, wherein a roll of pound notes was obviously concealed. Quickly, he calculated-a roll of that thickness probably had about ten or eleven notes, and he knew that Bill had sold ten tests..."A pound a piece—not too shabby. Didn't bother keeping one for yourself, I see." He had noticed the scribbled formulas inscribed between Bill's pudgy fingers.

"You can't know all that!" shouted Bill. His comrades were stirring uneasily, which Sherlock noted complacently. Insulting others at the expense of their inferior intellects was…invigorating—so much so that he'd even stopped counting minutes. Even to himself he refused to admit that it was the only way he knew how to retaliate against the taunts that the bullies had plagued him with all year long—excluding him, jeering at him, ostracizing him. He would not say that it had hurt, even though it had.

_Hurt._

There it was again—the loathsome tripe. Impractical. Imprudent. Impossible for him to ever accept. He crushed it beneath his next reply to Bill. "I can, and do know all that—from observing details of various situations with a keenness of perception which is far beyond the reach of your boring little brain."

He knew the punch was coming, and he braced himself for it as Bill's fist crashed into his jaw. The physical pain was easily rerouted—it was nothing more than a set of stimuli. _This_ sensation of hurt was easily cast aside.

So instead of whinging, or pleading for mercy, he merely laughed scornfully. "Really, all of you—how does it work? How do you operate, live your dull little lives on such miniscule brain power? It would almost be an intriguing study, if you lot weren't all so banal."

Much of Sherlock's tirade—brimming with style and grammar most unusual in a thirteen-year-old—was not grasped by his aggressors. But the tone in which it was delivered—one of an amusement too frosty to really approach humor—was not lost upon them.

Bill turned practically purple with rage. "You—you're a freak, is what you are. A bloody rotten freak."

And there it was. Delivered with the same horrified disgust that he had heard in the voices of many by this time—family, schoolmates, even strangers.

It had happened so many times that most people would have lost count. Grown used it. Ceased to care.

But Sherlock had an entire room in the Mind Palace—an ugly room—filled with all the scorching, scathing memories of each moment when that word had been flung at him.

It should have stopped hurting by now. The concept of "hurt" was ridiculous. Had he not already established that?

Instead, the carefully sustained icy façade—in truth so very fragile—crumbled. He had borne many epithets that were "technically" worse, but there was something about this that made him cringe—and then fight back with all the sound and fury in him.

In another moment Bill Reilly was on the ground, giving muffled protests through a bloody nose and futily struggling under the light, but surprisingly strong, weight of Sherlock.

Afterwards, Sherlock wondered if he would ever have stopped hitting him, if nobody had intervened. Someone did, of course—he heard shouts and felt the hands of some watchful professor dragging him off of Bill.

In a moment, his former bullies had slunk away and he was left alone, facing the stern visage of one Mr. Kerr.

_It's the last day of school,_ Sherlock reminded himself. _Whatever he has in store for me can't be too serious._

He waited for the teacher's admonitions, but then a different voice spoke. "Sherlock."

The smooth, patronizing, snobbish voice could only belong to one person.

He turned, surprised. "Mycroft?"

Mycroft was wearing a long black coat that made him look sleek, though still plump. He had a long umbrella hooked over his arm. His face was grave.

_Surely he's not _that_ miffed at me_. _It's only a fight. But—why is he here early—hours early?_

For once, he found himself unable to draw a satisfying conclusion. He squared his thin shoulders. "Come to reprimand me for fighting, dear brother?"

Mr. Kerr seemed to have exchanged a meaningful glance with Mycroft and had moved off, leaving the brothers alone.

Mycroft did not smile at his younger brother's impudence—not even his typical thin-lipped smug smirk. Seeing him without it made Sherlock feel strange…something was missing. _What is going on?_

"It has nothing to do with that, Sherlock. It…I'm afraid I have some unfortunate news."

Sherlock's blood felt suddenly as though it had turned to ice his veins. He opened his mouth to speak, to urge Mycroft onward, but the words wouldn't come.

Mycroft stared at the ground for a moment—such reticence was unusual for him, as was the strange, tight working of his jaw…as though he were trying to restrain emotion.

_Mycroft? Emotions?_

At length, the elder Holmes cleared his throat and said slowly, "There's no use beating around the bush. Sherlock, Mother is dead. She was killed in a terrible auto crash this morning."

The words were flat, empty. They had no meaning.

Sherlock stood perfectly still. For a moment, his brain was silent—as though everything had stopped ticking and turning and moving, and there was an utter, awful stillness. And then, as swiftly as it had stopped, it started again, and his mind flooded so full of information—the smell of the grass, the sound of the wind, the thread hanging off Mycroft's left cuff—that he was almost bowled over by it.

And through it all, one thought pierced through the chaos like a blade.

_Mummy. _

_"I will always love you."_

There were no tears in his eyes, no outward signs of feeling on his thin, pale face. But in his mind he turned over the promise she had made on the green hillside above the circus tent, two years. He had known then, and he knew now, that she was the only person in the world who would make and keep that promise to him. It was the only thing that had given him hope—hope that, to one person at least, he was not really a freak.

But Mummy was gone. Dead.

There would be no one left to love him now.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: My goodness, I'm sorry it's been so long! This is more angsty—almost tragedy…I just love this fic because it lets me work out my own angst and emotions. As such, it's really a sob-story of Sherlock's early life. If that's your cup-of-tea, I hope you continue to read and enjoy! This chapter is probably the saddest yet, in that it deals with a real rejection for Sherlock (one that I think must have happened at some point) and also drug use. So, WARNING! for teen drug use and major angst.**

**Read and review, please!**

Chapter 4

_Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap._

Sherlock was bored.

_Level of ennui…hmmm…ten out of ten._

He might have said eleven, but that was a logical impossibility utilized only by those who favored hyperbole over reason.

_So…bored…what now?_

He glanced languidly about the classroom, where his dozen classmates were still bent studiously over their exams.

He had finished—an hour ago? No, not an hour, for they had not yet been here an hour, under the watchful eye of the acerbically thin, spinster teacher who was worried because her beloved dog had had indigestion for the last two days. At least, that was what her left shoe suggested.

The exam had been almost frightfully easy. Everything about this school—a horrid public one that Mycroft had asked him to try, in hopes of integrating his troublesome younger brother into "normal" society…a misguided attempt, in Sherlock's opinion, and one that had only been agreed to under duress—was simple and quick and _boring._

He had made no friends. He had not "integrated." Public, private, upper or lower class—he never really belonged. And he never really wanted to.

He was sixteen now—taller than ever, with thin, aquiline, yet sensitive features and eyes whose piercing blue gaze few could withstand. Handsome—but with too much intelligence to know how to make any use of it. He could be charming if chose, but he generally didn't. He was more brilliant than ever, more distant than he used to be, and very much alone.

_Alone is what I have. Alone protects me,_ he told himself, as he deciphered the worn scrawls across the wooden desktop.

_Why are you thinking about this?_

He turned his thoughts outwards once more, seeking a refuge from the mundanity that pervaded almost every second of school. _If I don't find something…anything to occupy myself, I'm going to go mad._

_Perhaps you already are._

His mobile phone vibrated, and he looked down to see several missed calls from his brother. Ever since—the last day of Eighth Year (that was what his mind supplied, and it was easier to settle on that stark and technical description), Mycroft has been making a (transparent, Sherlock thought) effort to reach out to his younger brother. He was also trying to "do what was best for him"—thus, the school.

When they talked, it was—not boring. Sherlock wished it was, as that would have made it easier to categorize and demote, really, into a chamber of the Mind Palace where he might never consider it of importance again. But it wasn't boring, talking to Mycroft, it was just odd. It always began with friendly overtures on Mycroft's end, with brief, sarcastic responses—if any, from Sherlock's…and then it evolved into a sort of interrogation, with Mycroft asking questions he had no intention of answering, and finally coming to a climax when Sherlock would say something along the lines of, "Look, we both know that kindness, consideration, and, for that matter, conversation don't come naturally to you, brother. Why don't you call up your dietician and have a lovely little chat with her instead?"

And then Mycroft would become irritated—at least, that was what Sherlock chose to define it as; the idea of Mycroft being hurt had no place in the Mind Palace—and they would hang up shortly thereafter.

More tests (these dull little minds took _so _long to do anything) were collected in a shuffle of paper. Sherlock watched, chronically uninterested, until his eyes wandered too far left and he snapped his gaze forward again, feeling a hateful glow of heat (and, doubtless, colour) in his pale cheeks.

Sylvia. Sylvia Thackeray, the queen of the classroom. Her place in the Mind Palace was a mercifully (and unusually) unrealistic one—it had no notations on the fact that she should have been head-and-shoulders above this public school crowd (what _had_ Mycroft been thinking—half of Sherlock's classmates were entirely low-class), but wasn't.

When Sherlock looked at her, it was as though the cogs and wheels in his mind switched off and something else entirely—something that observed but did not deduce her smooth blonde hair and blue-green eyes, her slim fingers clutching the pen…the faintest whiff of lilac perfume clinging round her…

_You're an idiot,_ his mind informed him.

He would not acknowledge it, though. Not yet.

He had resolved—oh, weeks ago—to speak with her, on this, the day before the beginning of an (all too brief) Christmas holiday. And now at last the exam was over, and they were all—even her, and even the slowest, dullest students (surely she wasn't one!)—putting down their pens and pouring out into a winter afternoon that was overhung with clouds.

He quickened his steps to walk beside her, a difficult feat because it meant breaking through the ranks of her followers.

"Sylvia," he said. His voice—deep for his age, and normally steady, was trembling a little, and he hated himself or it.

She turned. They all turned, and every eye was fixed on him. Suddenly he wondered if embarrassing them by his constant observations and distancing himself by his extreme intelligence hadn't been the wisest course.

"What?" Her eyebrows lifted. Whether it was a threat or an invitation, he could not tell.

He didn't know how to do this. He had never thought of doing it before. Wasn't it best to get right to the point? "You are very attractive," he said. The words came out more slowly than any he'd ever spoken, it seemed, and they hung in the air quite horribly for a long moment afterwards.

That hadn't been the right thing to say. Sherlock didn't breathe. _I didn't know how else to—_Would she—

She laughed. "You?" Her pretty eyes—cruel eyes—scraped over him with ruthless indifference. "Oh, God. Do you think I'm an idiot? As though I'd go for a freak like you."

She didn't favor him with a second glance.

In his mind, he deduced her as she walked away—deduced all of them (all laughing), laid bare their pitiful secrets and humiliated them all. The rush of words almost left his lips. In the future, they would—but at the moment he had one terrible flash of realization…that if he humiliated everyone now, one more time, he would be more alone than ever.

He walked away—apart from the repulsed (and repulsive) laughter, walked until he found himself staring into the face of a dull December wind, at the edge of the school-grounds.

_Never again. It's over._ In his mind, he watched her fade—fade into an insecure (_just broke up with her third boyfriend; gained five pounds this month_) and boring (_lazy; got expelled from private school_) nobody whose blonde hair and blue eyes would never have a place in the Mind Palace now.

He'd never killed a dream before. Perhaps he'd never had a dream before, not like this.

It hurt more than he wanted it to.

_She doesn't matter._

_She called you a freak. One look…that was all it took for her to see—they can all see—_

There were footsteps on the dead leaves behind him.

"I know how it feels. It sucks, doesn't it?"

He turned to look at the speaker. The waifish figure was vaguely familiar. He'd seen her hanging out at the fences bordering the school, never really belonging. One of the lowest of the lower class here.

_In a different way. She's a social misfit because of her dysfunctional home life and her choice of friends. I'm brilliant. We have nothing in common…_

"They've called me freak too," she said. She slurred her words a bit—she was from the city, with poor enunciation. "I've stopped caring."

He shifted from one foot to the other. "How?" It was important for him not to show too much interest. He didn't need her.

She smiled, revealing grayish gums and discolored teeth. He could tell she was about his age, but she looked older. Her skin was as pale as his, but with a translucent, ghostly look which, along with the violet bruise-like smudges under eyes was a clear indicator of what she'd been doing out along the fences.

"How do you think?" Her hand was a fist, clenched around something. "Don't you want some?" she asked. There were little red lines, like scratch-marks, along her forearm..

"Some of what?"

"You know what."

He did. He raised his eyebrows to fill the silence and chewed the inside of his cheek, weighing his options. "I'll still be a freak, won't I?" he asked the question flatly, as though it didn't matter.

Her empty eyes stared unblinkingly into his. "People like us will always be freaks." She shrugged, and uncurled her pale fingers from the needle, inviting him to take it. "This makes it hurt less."

He took it from her and examined it. His mind supplied words to describe it: surgical, pristine, deadly. He nearly said, _"I'm tired of hurting,"_ but he judged that to be an unwise declaration of sentiment.

It was only after he had plunged the needle into his arm that he realized that that had hurt too.

**A/N: Terribly sorry to end on such a note. I promise this story has a happyish ending, but we must plow through more angst first!**


End file.
